PhD position in Behavioural Ecology of ants

Dr. Florian Menzel, University of Mainz, Germany is offering a PhD position in the behavioural ecology of ants. The candidate will investigate behavioural responses to footprints in ants, their chemical and behavioural mechanisms, and the consequences for colony fitness and competitive interactions. He/she will perform lab and field experiments as well as simulation studies. Please remember
that there is an application deadline: 15th December 2018.

New in October:

New ant pictures from Asia and Europe

In October 2018, we added a new colorful selection of ant pictures to our ever growing virtual collection on antbase.net. We present six species from Germany, Italy and India. This time, we even show some extras together with the ants pictures: for some specimen, we display a photograph of the habitat where the ant was collected. Or do you want to discover tiny arthropods associated with ants?

Call for specimens: SEM study on morphology of resin collecting ants

Christine Grabatin from the University of Bonn, Germany needs specimens for her PhD study on resin collecting ants. She is studying the mandible structure with SEM in order to to detect structures on the workers' mandibles that explain why the resin does not really stick to the mandibles when being worked. The results might provide new insights to the evolution of social behaviour. A number of species are most interesting for her project: Formica paralugubris, Gauromyrmex sp. and all Vollenhovia species, especially Vollenhovia sp. aff. acanthina

In Memory of Ulrich Maschwitz (1937 - 2018)

With great sadness we let you know that Prof. Ulrich Maschwitz passed away on 25th July 2018 after long illness.
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Maschwitz dedicated his life to the study of Asian ants, with Malaysia as a focus point of his work. He was a real ant expert, a great observer, who knew fascinating details of the life history and behavioral ecology of rare (tropical) ants, guided his students to the most interesting fields of research and translated the observations into marvelous scientific reports of stunning ant behavior. His enthusiasm, spirit, humor and philanthropy will be missed sadly.

New in July:

More pictures of ants from Germany

This month, we present some ant photographs in order to enhance our section Ants of Germany. These specimens were collected by Seiki Yamane during his visit to Germany in spring 2016. Many thanks to Seiki san for providing these specimens!

Renewal of antbase.net

Antbase.net grew constantly with an astonishing increase of the picture quality and the quantity since its foundation in 2004 with some very first simple technology photographs of ants from Malaysia.
Currently antbase.net presents high resolution photographs of 1151 specimens from 826 species (deadline 8th February 2018) These specimens represent 119 genera and ten subfamilies. Even if antbase.net still has a focus on ants from Asia and the Palaearctic region, this website presents ants from 34 countries of all continents.
Since the last decade experienced many changes in ant systematics due to countless advances in ant research, it was time for us to sort all species according to the current ant systematics. This work was used to integrate all ant photographs to the our database and doing a light cleanup on the website. We refreshed some country and regional presentations and removed a few outdated tools.
We hope you enjoy the changes and invite you to explore the renewed antbase.net.

New in February:

New pictures of ants from Germany

In February 2018, we present some of high resolution photographs of ants from Germany in our monthly section. Again, these ants are part of Seiki Yamane san's collection who collected them during a visit to Germany in 2016.

Discoverants.com
A new website with ant related educational resources for school teachers

Recently, Dr. Magdalena Sorger launched a website called discoverants.com. This site is a hub for educational resources primarily for school teachers (with students age 6-18) who want to bring ants and ant science into their classrooms. This site provides
educational material, citizen science projects and reading material.
Even if this website is developed basically for the use in the United States, discoverants.com might be useful for educational projects all around the world.

New in January:

New pictures of ants from Taiwan

Happy New Year! 2018, we start our monthly section of new high resolution ant photographs with some ants from Taiwan. Seiki Yamane san collected them on a field trip to this island and provided them to antbase.net. Dear Seiki, thank you so much for these rare ants!

ASIAN MYRMECOLOGY made an important step to become awarded by the government of Malaysia

It was just announced that ASIAN MYRMECOLOGY fulfills the recognition requirementt of the 2017 CREAM award! CREAM awards (Current Research in Malaysia) have been introduced by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, to honor academic journals which have been showcasing noticeable performance and promising growth.
Such awards are also a recognition given to scientific publishers that have been maintaining quality publications, as well as executing successful strategies in continuing growing their scholarly journals. We congratulate the editors and the publishing team of ASIAN MYRMECOLOGY, as well as University Malaysia Sabah to first, but important step towards CREAM!

New in October:

New photographs of ants from South-East Asia

In 2010, Martin Pfeiffer and Hans-Peter Katzmann travelled to the Natural History Museum in London to take high resolution photographs of some specimens of its famous ant collection. Most of these photographs were already presented on antbase.net many years ago. However, we recently discovered that some of these ant pictures have not been published yet. Therefore we present six specimen of the NHM this month.

Only one week left to the 11th ANeT meeting!
Attend as a conference delegate!

The 11th ANeT meeting will be held from 26th to 28th October 2017 at the Punjabi University Patiala, India. You may still register to attend this meeting as a participant, even if the deadline for abstract submission has already expired. You may find all relevant information regarding registration and other important data on the official conference website.

New in September:

More ant pictures from around the world

We are back from our summer break, but we continue our myrmecological journey around the world. This time, we present a small selection of pictures of fascinating ants from Australia, Germany and Ivory Coast.

New in July:

Ant pictures from around the world

July marks the beginning of main holiday season in the northern hemisphere. Therefore we want to invite you to a myrmecological journey around the world with a small selection of photographs of ants from all five continents.

Antbase pictures as data-source for research papers

You want to study ant assemblages in the rainforests of Costa Rica and the deserts of Iran, but you don't have time to travel to Central America and the Middle East?
With the help of high resulation photographs hosted by antweb.org and antbase.net, this can be done without leaving your lab. Such a study was done by Sophie Schofield and co-workers at the lab of Kate Parr who compared morphometric traits of ants from two contrasting biomes from Costa Rica and the Iran. They published their paper in Myrmecological News which is soley based on data obtained by making measurements on high resolution photographs of ants obtained at image data bases like antweb.org and antbase.net.

New Book on Wood Ant Ecology and Conservation

Formica wood ants are ecologically important species for boreal forest ecosystems of the northern hemisphere. These ants are key stone species when it comes to predation, mutualism, bioturbation and nutrient cycling. Therefore a lot of research has been done on these ants, but no comprehensive work on their ecology and conservation has been published yet. A new book closing this gap was edited by Jenni A. Stockan and Elva J. H. Robinson and written by a broad range of ant researcher being experts on all aspects of Formica ecology and conservation.
They will publish soon "Wood Ant Ecology and Conservation" which will be first available on 7th July 2016. Anyone interested in Formica ants will love this book!

Higher impact factor for Asian Myrmecology

Great news for Asian Myrmecology! Its impact factor has risen to 1.1 from 0.89 and rank in Entomology to 46 from 56 last year.
Congratulate the whole team of Asian Myrmecology for this achievement!

New in June:

The first ant pictures after our restart in Germany

This month, we present the first photographs we produced after our retun to Germany. We managed to repair our camera system and now we are keen to share with our user the very first pictures taken by the new camera.
We are very grateful to Yamane san who provided some rare ant specimens from remote areas of South-East Asia to us.

In Memory of Rudy J. Kohout

Field Course on ants in Sri Lanka

Interested in learning about ant taxonomy and field sampling in a tropical country? Then you might want to attent the "Training course on field sampling methods and identification of ants" offered at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka during 15-16 September, 2016. It is even free of charge! Instructors will be internationally well respected ant scientists like Prof. Seiki Yamane, Prof. Sriyani Dias and Dr. Himender Bharti.
However, the deadline for international applicants is approaching fast: 15th June 2016. Apply soon!

New Citizen Science Project: Ant Picnic Lesson Plan

When you are a teacher or working in any other educational position with children or grown-ups, you might be interested in the newest citizen science project of Rob Dunn. His team wants to set up a worldwide large-scaled study on what type of foods ants prefer and needs your help!

A great opportinity for children and students to feed ants, learn about nature and contribute to real science!

Asian Myrmecology goes ONLINE FIRST!

This weekend, Asian Myrmecology has published its first papers as online first. And a DOI has been assigned to all papers including the ones of the back issues of this journal which allows a better citation and faster publication. Enjoy the new publications on taxonomy, morphology and ecology of Asian ants!

Identification keys for Bornean ants updated

We just updated our collection of identification keys for ants from Borneo. We refreshed the links for a free download of almost any identification key and added some new taxonomic studies covering ants from this tropical island. This list may become a valuable resource for every myrmecologist studying Bornean ants.Click here!

So we wish all of you a peaceful and happy Easter weekend and after a short break we will be back soon with more captivating pictures.

Symposium "Ants 2016" takes place in Munich

This year, the symposium "Ants 2016" will be held in Munich. The leading scientists of the world studying ant interactions with fungi, microbes, other insects, and plants will gather to Munich from 5-7 May this year. The researchers will give insights to their research and discuss their newest outcomes with their colleagues. Don't miss this inspiring event! For more information, see here!

New in March: Two Sphingtomyrmex species from Thailand

This month we present pictures of Thai species of the enigmatic genus Sphingtomyrmex. Weeyawat Yaitrong and coworkers recently revised the species of this doryline genus from Thailand. Their work was published in the Far Eastern Entomologist.
Here you may find pictures of Sphinctomyrmex furcatus and the very first photographs of the newly described S. siamensis.

Welcome to Dr. Dirk Mezger - the new project manager of www.antbase.net

Since the end of February we have a new project manager for antbase.net! Dr. Dirk Mezger has joint our team and will act as team leader and photographer. At the same time we opened our new lab at the University of Bayreuth. So now we really arrived in Germany!

Brilliant photographs of living ants

Daniela Magdalena Sorger was an ecconomist, when she discovered her love for ants. She went to Mulu NP in Sarawak for her first field research and after that she worked for www.antbase.net as a photographer. This year she has finished her PhD in the lab of Rob Dunn (North Carolina State University). Now she published a website on her research (theantlife.com), which includes a photogallery with beautiul ant pictures. Have a look!

We are back to Germany!

After five years in Mongolia we have moved back to Germany in October. We took the TransSib train, while our equipment came by air freight. Martin got support from an old friend, Carl Beierkuhnlein, who is a professor for biogeography at the University of Bayreuth. He invited us to come to Bayreuth and to teach at his department from January 2016. So we came "back to our roots", as Martin made his Master Diploma at that university. Thank you Carl!

Three species of Recurvidris from Thailand from a recent publication of Weeyawat Jaitrong and Decha Wiwatwitaya

Immediately before we packed our lab for Germany our camera was broken. To present some pictures at Christmas time I asked Weeyawat Jaitrong for help. He sent us these lovely pictures from his recent publication in Indian Entomological Journal Halteres. We are really thankful for that and wish our readers all the best for Christmas holidays and a Happy, healthy and thrice blessed NEW YEAR 2016! We shall struggle to repair our equipment. But now please have a look to the new species Recurvidris chanapaithooni, which can be studied here, please click!

The last ant pictures "made in Mongolia"

As Martin is leaving Mongolia, he will also take the camera back to Germany. Anu, our Mongolian photographer has taken the chance to show what she has learned in the recent time. Here she presents excellent pictures of 17 ant species. The specimens have been donated and lend by Prof. Seiki Yamane, our Japanese counterpart, who is a exceptionally gifted ant researcher with a very large personal ant collection. We say thank you to both of them! Good luck Anu for your next job & private life!! In the next days our ant lab will move back to Germany after 5 years of stay in Mongolia. We hope to continue from there very soon.
But now, please have a look to the photographs, including the typespecimen of Myrmica yamanei, please click!

New issue of Asian Myrmecology

In mid of holidays Asian Myrmecology has published its new issue with 18 most interesting papers on taxonomy, distribution and behavior of Asian ants.
Check it out!

ANTMAPS - a new online tool to visualize ant diversity and ant distribution

Benoit Guénard, University of Hong Kong, and Evan Economo, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, announce the release of AntMaps.org, a new online tool developed by Evan Economo, Julia Janicki, Benoit Guenard, Nitish Narula, and Matt Ziegler, to visualize ant diversity and distributions based on the Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics (GABI) database. GABI is a compilation of currently 1.6 million records of ant species occurrence records from nearly 8500 publications and numerous museum and specimen databases. We hearty congratulate to this effort that should also be a tool to identify erroneous or suspicious ant records. So if you are a specialist for a certain group, please check your favorite species!

There are several visualization tools implemented in AntMaps, 1) the Diversity View: the visualization of species richness patterns for any subfamily or genus, with clickable species list for each area , 2) the Species Range Map: you can view a range map for all 15,000 species and subspecies, with clickable access to underlying records behind the occurrence of a species in an area, 3) the Region Comparison:you can compare the overlap of species between any two regions, or map the geographic spread of species that occur in a given region.

Higher impact for Asian Myrmecology

Good News for Ant Researchers: ASIAN MYRMECOLOGY enhances its Impact Factor to 0.889, rank 54 in Entomology! 5-years-IF is even 0.912.

A Guide to the Ants of Sabangau (Indonesia, Kalimantan)

Indonesia has the largest extent of tropical peatlands in the world, mostly in Borneo, Sumatra and Irian Jaya, covering 20.7 million hectares and storing 65% of all tropical peat carbon. The peat-swamp forest in the Sabangau catchment, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, comprises the largest remaining continuous lowland forest in Borneo, and supports the world's largest populations of Bornean orangutan. The ant fauna of Kalimantan is largely unknown. Field ecologist Stijn Schreven, from OuTrop, Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project, has now made a major attempt to shed some light on ant diversity of that area. In collaboration with a team of local ant researchers, with antweb.org and AntBase.Net he developed a A Guide to the Ants of Sabangau in order to ease identification of Kalimantan ants and to foster future studies on them! If you like to check out this beautiful book, download it here (36 MB, 128 pages). More information on the whole project can be obtained at their webpage..

Eight more species in December

These rarities from South East Asia and China have been collected and partly described by Prof. Yamane in the recent years. Most of that species have been given to our collection as a gift. We say thank you very much, dear Professor! We hope that you have much luck with further ant collections! Have a look to these beautiful photographs....

A new photographer at www.antbase.net:

fine pics from Yamane san's great collection

After all Khisghee decided to quit her work with us in order to better care for her baby - and Master Thesis. We thankfully ackowlegde her brilliant work and all the beautiful pictures she took for us. But now Lights, Music, Curtain... for our new photographer Anu Nasanbat! She has choosen mainly Dolichoderus species for her first pictures at www.antbase.net.. Quality is fine! Have a look, please....

www.antbase.net will have some difficulties to put all these changes to its databank in the near future. Being on the web for 10 years now we urgently need to transfer all our data to a new server. We are struggeling...to keep pace with the current proceedings in myrmecology.

A new ant researcher was born!

Our photographer Khishigdelger has given birth to a baby in the last week of May. Mother and baby are fine and we expect that around September antbase.net will come back to normal work again. So please come back to us later!

Type specimens from the collection of Prof. Seiki Yamane

The new year starts with an interesting contribution from Japan. Prof. Dr. Seiki Yamane, Asia's most famous ant researcher, has opened his legendary collection for us, which is the result of dilligent ant sampling for decades. Numerous students and coworkers profited from his ant enthusiasm and several times www.antbase.net was in the lucky position to show some of his thoroughly prepared specimens. In January we showed already a collection of species sampled from South East Asia, in February we present a special on Aenictus, a blind, mass raiding genus inhibitating the rainforest floor. Many of these are type specimens! Check it out!

A hardly known genus of myrmecophilous crickets

The family Myrmecophilidae, the ant loving crickets, comprise five genera, one of it is Camponophilus, with its single member C. irmi - an ant cricket living symbiotically with Camponotus gigas, the Giant Forest Ant. Here we provide automontage pictures of this rare and hardly known species. Check for details!

More specimens from Ulykpan Aibek's collection!

The first specimens from Ulykpan Aibek's collection!

The ants of Mongolia are our special mission! In cooperation with Aibek U. we proudly present 10 ant species from Mongolia, including such interesting species as Polyergus nigerrimus. The pictures have been taken bei our photographer Khishgee as usual. We are aiming at renewing all pictures from Mongolian ant species, so there will be more pictures coming soon! Have a look to Aibek's collection.

NEW in September and October 2012: The first Aenictus specimens from Thailand

We have set up a cooperation with Dr WEEYAWAT JAITRONG, who is the Asian specialist for Aenictus. Find here the first pictures of some two specimens from Thailand. More pictures of these species will be here available soon. See Zootaxa (only Abstract!) for Dr Weeyawat's latest work. And here to our pictures for September and October!

NEW in August 2012: Specimens from Borneo

Summer holidays almost everywhere, and also in our lab. We have been on expedition to Southern Siberia, therefore our July presentation is skipped. Here are some pictures from Bornean ant species for August. Martin is currently working on some Borneo ant papers, so we had a look to our collection and found some interesting specimens there. Let's see...

NEW in May 2012: Ants from India!

NEW: Made in Mongolia: The first ant pictures from our lab in Ulaanbaatar: 16 species from China!

After a long period of preparation, we proudly present here the first outcome of our efforts: 16 ant species from the collection of John R. Fellowes, editor of ASIAN MYRMECOLOGY, who sampled the specimens from different regions of China.
The pics have been prepared on our well-proven Leica Z6 Apo A that we brought from Ulm. Little change to before: instead of senior photographer Hans Peter Katzmann our new staff Khishigdelger Enkhtur, now chief photographer and project manager,mounted the specimens and took the pics. Congrats to your work, and welcome at www.antbase.net!

Ants from the Peoples Republic of China are still rare in Internet collections, so we are happy that we can unravel some of these "hidden secrets". Take a look to what John R. Fellowes had collected some years ago and visit our Ants of China! More species are about to come.

NEW in March and April 2012: More ants from China!

These months we prepared even more ants from China, from John Fellowes' collections. Some of these ants had been photographed in India, by Himender Bharti, as a part of our cooperation in ANeT. Others come form our lab in Ulaanbaatar, photographed by Khishigdelger. Have a look to our collection!

The Ants of Iran

Iran is a vast country with a total area of 1.6 million square kilometers, which is located in the mid-latitude band of arid and semi-arid regions of the Old World, in Southwest Asia. Biogeographically southwest Asia represents a transition zone between three regions: Palaearctic, Afrotropical and Oriental. Iran’s borders at the south and east are near to the Afrotropical and Oriental regions, respectively. Although arid and semi-arid areas cover more than half of the country, Iran also includes high mountains with alpine areas, broadleaf forest in the southern coastal plains of the Caspian forests, and steppe forests in the north and west. The Iranian ant fauna has been poorly investigated. So far 142 species belonging to 32 genera have been recorded from Iran (Paknia et al. 2008, Paknia et al. 2010), which is still far from the real number. Have a look at the marvels of the Iranian desert...

Dr. Bernhard Seifert of the "Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz" is one of the best known German ant researchers. After having published the most important ant species of Germany from his famous book: "Ameisen: beobachten, bestimmen", we continue our collaboration with a new section on the Ants of Central Europe. This new part of our website is a teamwork between www.antbase.net, Dr. Seifert and the Natural History Museum Vienna, where Daniela Magdalena Sorger took the pictures of these beautiful ants.Have a look...

This website is dedicated to the ants of Poring, Kinabalu
National Park, Sabah, Malaysia, a tropical rainforest with the world's
highest ant diversity: 650 species of ants from 81 genera and 8 subfamilies
of the Formicidae have been found there. In our virtual museum of natural
history you find pictures of Aenictinae, Cerapachyinae, Dorylinae, Dolichoderinae,
Formicinae, Myrmicinae, Ponerinae, and Pseudomyrmecinae.Have a look...

Dr. Bernhard Seifert of the "Staatliches Museum
für Naturkunde Görlitz" is one of the best known German
ant researchers. In Antbase.net he shows pictures of the
most important ant species of Germany from this famous book: "Ameisen:
beobachten, bestimmen" (Naturbuchverlag).GO!